Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle
Write the first paragraph of your page here. Endings About It's about what all great stories are about: love, and how to keep it. How to maintain the passion and the joy that brought you together in the first place, under a night sky lit so intensely by the full moon that long silver shadows fell behind you on the sand. A perfect night, made more so when steel blue clouds rolled in and bolts of lightning danced across the ocean on the eastern horizon. No rain, not that night, just electricity in the air and in the moment, the shadows fading away as the storm obscured the moon and both of you staggered in fear and wonder across the crest of the dunes. The house was visible, every window bright and alive. Not home, but no empty shell either. You ran towards it, bare toes dancing across the glittering quartz-laden tarmac. Then up the drive, all concrete and stubborn seaside grasses. Nights like this, there were so few of them, so you stopped, both of you, craning necks up and the lights above were far, far. And once inside, all that you had come for. But you know that, even if you think you've forgotten. Today is DAY Ask (the phone booth) You begin to ask a question, a simple question, a basic question anyone could answer, but before you even open your mouth, the phone rings. You answer it, to hear a husky voice say, "I know what you want. The answer is still no." Dejectedly, you walk away, to live a life of quiet despair. You have been rejected Deactivate pants Well, aren't you sneaky? Perhaps you're using foreknowledge to know that you need to deactivate the pants so that they don't esplode and kill you. Unfortunately, in order to gain this foreknowledge, you utilized one of those cheap $70 time machines, which of course are terribly unreliable. As you might expect (well, anyone except you, because obviously you didn't expect it), a horrific fabric-of-history rending paradox erupts, setting off a chain reaction that results in four things: 1) William McKinley lived through his presidential term. 2) Hitler slipped in the bathtub and knocked some sense into himself. 3) Cracker Jacks were invented, but contained no surprise toy. 4) Your parents married different people. Weirdly enough, you were born anyway, to your father and a different mother, but during a fishing trip in Minnesota in the big Winter of aught-eighty-eight, you fell through the ice and were nearly frozen to death. However, you were pulled out by a kindly gentleman claiming to be a direct descendent of Napoleon Bonaparte. It may come as some surprise to you to note that none of the above actually erased your existence or caused your untimely death. However, in the time it took to explain all of this alternate history to you, the pants exploded anyway. ###Dagnabbit, that should have worked### Die Surveying your options, you come to the only conclusion possible: the job you've been hired to do, making something 'hip' and 'cool' out of this sleepy backwater, is just too much work. This place is NEVER going to be a suitable backdrop for the Coke commercial you have in mind. But before you leave you do spraypaint "COKE IS IT!" on the phone booth a few dozen times. You've given up gracefully Disarm pants Oho, but pants don't have arms! They have legs! And in the pondering of this imponderable you lose your brane in an infinite loop. Trapped in a semantic paradise Disleg pants A few Zorro-like slashes with a pair of fabric shears and you've got yourself a very stylish pair of exploding briefs. NB: They're still exploding. NB2: Not any more, actually. Now they're done exploding. I bet you think you're the fricking Tailor of Panama Fly You remove your shimmering spacesuit and spread your golden wings. With a sigh of relief, your wings take you up high into the sky. You see the phone booth vanish far below you, lost in one tiny dead-end in a labyrinth of city streets. Up, up, you rush into the sparkling azure sky. Far in the distance, you see the crystal city. Behind you, the golden sands of the ocean far away. Right in front of you, the spinning propellers of a B-29 bomber. Rrrrooonnrnreeeeaaaarwwwrrrrr!! You are diced into glittery colored shards, flyboy Inventory You are carrying: Pants (being worn) In fact... you take a closer look at the tag of those pants, which sticks prominently out of the side with a DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG notice attached. But what does the small print say? "Akmi Esploding Pantz." Shit. SHIT-- Ka-boom Jump Yay. You jumped Kick (the phone booth) The booth's eyes widen as you draw your foot back. "Terry, no, please, oh God you can't--" Its cries are cut short as your foot slams into it. With the sound of eggshells cracking, the booth fragments into countless pieces which are quickly lost in the mud. You have quit smoking Kiss (the phone booth) Toilet Plume: A spray of water droplets which rises up into the air each time you flush your toilet, which them spreads throughout the room and settles on every object in the room, including your toothbrush. Bearing this in mind, you decide not to kiss the phone booth. Plume Look East East. Back over your shoulder, as it happens. Something has been following you all day, ever since you left the shore, and it's still there now, lurking. A Being of Water and Darkness. You have gazed upon one of the old gods Look North You squint towards the north. See nothing but buildings huddled together and a narrow alley between the two of them... and... wait, someone coming down that alley in your direction. Someone angry, and bearing a gun... Looking around is not always a good idea Look Northeast Northeast. It's a direction that has always uniquely appealed to you... something about it suggests both coldness and sophistication, like mint and good chocolate, or maybe a dash of some highly priced liqueur. No one else ever seems to perceive these qualities, but you, with your perfect sense of direction that fails not even under the most troublous conditions, you who can taste the difference between NNE and ENN, you to whom OverNorth is *not* a joke... for you all the directions have significance, and flavor, and depth. You have waxed philosophical Look Northwest Good idea, apparently they like coffee in Seattle. You arrive, settle in for a while, and start to visit coffee shops. You note the comfortable chairs. You see how people seem to like paying inflated prices for a cup of water, heat treated milk, and assorted alkaloids. You synthesise, in your mind, the ideal average behavior of a perfect barista. There only remains a name and you will surely be rich. Wait, is that Battlestar Galactica showing on cable? You have founded Starbucks Look South Immediately to the south of the Town Square is the local tobacconist. Open doors lead in past the painted wooden Indian, into the shadowy receptive depths of the shop itself. Alluringly exhibited in the window is everything from Blackjack licorice chewing gum to the finest Cuban cigars... not to mention newspapers brought in from Florence and Kathmandu, twelve brands of salt-water taffy, imported Belgian chocolates in the shape of Easter rabbits, a veritable plethora of plastic lighthouse pencil sharpeners, instant just-add-water crab cakes, sea monkey farms complete with two sets of replacement sea monkeys in case anything happens to go wrong, and one used autographed Duran Duran poster. But none of these things are implemented, nor will you be able to look at them more closely from here, let alone go into the shop and mess around with them. For you sense instinctively that they have been included (with decreasing plausibility) solely for the sake of providing enough words in response to a single trivial action. words So... next to the tobacco shop is a quaint little bookstore in whose windows you detect works by Dickens, Flaubert, Lewis, Stevenson, Melville, and John LeCarre, bound variously in covers of pigskin, cowskin, monkeyskin, and finest suede, in states of repair ranging from mint condition to the hopelessly dilapidated rescue-es of a housefire in the home of a family of twelve screaming toddlers all of whom ran around unsupervised all day with chocolate popsicles and a full set of ninety-six (96) Crayola Magic Fun Markers ™. words, counting the word count from last time. Above this pair of quaint New Englandy shops there is a second story, which you automatically recognize have been converted into apartments. In the upper left apartment (which is to say, that above the tobacconist), you can see by the sign by the mailboxes there lives a young Swede named Sven. Sven seems to be a tidy fellow -- at least compared to his next door neighbor, out of whose open windows there billows a washing line from which depend several dozen pairs of silky underwear. the narrator breathes a sigh of Great Relief, since we are over 300. Enough about the underwear, then... SYCAMORA TREEEEEE words to go... Look Southeast Glancing to the southeast, you notice another phone booth. Odd. As far as you can tell, it's identical to the original two booths, which -- two? Wait. You distinctly recall there not being four phone booths here, which is how many you can now see, unless you count the phone booth hiding behind those two other phone booths to the west. Odd, odd. You begin to sweat. You empty your pockets, scattering phone booths onto the ground. Against the phone booths underfoot they make clattery phone booth sounds. Phone booths. Phone booths. You open your eyes. You are inside a phone booth. You open the booth. The booth is -- the booth the booth the booth is inside -- is inside -- It's my turn now Look Southwest The moon glides slowly and lovingly in that direction. The moonlight impinging on your eyes is reflected and refracted and reveals the booth to be in sheer point of fact a frog, which you kiss. A moon frog. You are a princess. A moon princess Look West You turn and squint your eyes against the setting sun, watching the way the long rays of light embrace the phone booth, sparkle from its surfaces, and glimmer against the storefronts hereabouts. Perfect, you think, clicking the shutter of your camera. It was up to you to find settings of natural beauty like this, you think, when the town council approached you about an advertising brochure, and you've done it. Another fine success Love You convince yourself that love is exciting and new and, ditching the phone booth, hop on the Pacific Princess and tour the world, meeting all kinds of wonderful folks and famous celebrities, and with each new cruise, helping people find new love... or rekindle an old one. Later, you make a successful run for Congress or something, but nearly fly into a fit the first time your political rival calls you "Senator Gopher". Oooooooooh, and you haven't even worn those shorts and kneesocks for YEARS. Bastard! Captain Stubing cannot help you now Love the phone booth You reach out to give the phone booth a flower. "I love you, Phone Booth." The phone booth says that it loves you, too, and gives you a hug. Wait, did I say hug? I meant falls on top of you and crushes you to death. Van Halen was right Pick up (the phone booth) Did you really think this was going to work out any differently in this game? YOU DIE, OK? Sheesh. You have died Punch (the phone booth) Sometimes even a quick game of US Men's Olympic Hockey Team Challenge just isn't enough. Take that, you.. you... booth! The pawn of corporate greed before you crumbles beneath your might. Glass smashes, metal bends, and you barely even notice as the sirens in the background draw nearer. Your escape didn't last very long, but hey. When the nice men in the whote coats give you your needle, everything seems ok again. You have been pacified Remove pants Aha, good plan! Remove the exploding pants before they have a chance to explode! Quickly, you doff the volatile garments. Egad, you have only seconds left to get rid of them, so you open the phone booth and fling them inside. Unfortunately, the phone booth is made of cheap glass and for some reason contains a bag of loose nails. No wait, it's not the phone booth that contains cheap glass and nails, it's your perforated body. Ouch. Not only that, but the worst part is that when they find your body in the morning, YOU AREN'T WEARING ANY PANTS! My god how embarrassing Run Discarding your trusty compass at the side of the road, you set out in an unspecified direction. Nine months later, deep in the Gobi, you stumble upon spiritual enlightenment. Sadly, you are too pregnant with the phone booth's child (don't ask) to accomplish anything with this newfound knowledge. But look on the bright side: when the labor is over, you'll be able to call someone to get you out of this damned place. Mongolia is now... Verizon Sing You take a deep breath and give freedom to the music within you. People are always saying they don't like the sound of it, but YOU know how great it is-- and it's clear the booth feels it too, the way it warbles back and forth responsively, resonating to your every note, the telephone within reechoing the chime and providing the scintillating backbeat of a busy signal, until that final crescendo when all the glass blows out of the doors. The power of your lungs is undisputed Sit (on the phone booth) There are 56 fellow MIT students in there already, but one more and you get the WORLD RECORD. You somehow squeeze between Misty and Muffy, and end up sandwiched beside Mindy. Then the creaking begins. Then the cracking. Then the exploding. Fifty-seven MIT students end up scattered across the town square, many crippled for life, but every single one ends up in the Guinness Book of Records. You have been recognized Throw pants Pants? What pants? You have attempted to use knowledge from a previous life Touch (the phone booth) The booth tenses as you lay your hands tenderly on its hinges. It resists, it resists, as you begin to knead slowly, then... it melts beneath your tender ministrations. You can almost see the stress lifting and dispersing as you glide your hands lovingly over the panes of frosted glass which conceal the keypad, the coin slot, the handset... The phone rings. Huskily. Meanwhile... Undo The last hour scrolls backwards rapidly-- the speeding ticket, the unfortunate incident with the roadkill and the barbecue-- and you're at the beginning of your last turn again, about to get into the car, keys in hand, with the clouds roaring across the sky. >'DRIVE' You slide elegantly into the leather seat of your Porsche and put your foot to the pedal. The road spins away beneath you, until a few moments later you are distracted from your driving excitement by the flashing of red lights in the rearview mirror. Mortified, you pull over, and with a sense of deja vu give the police officer your license and registration, and wearily accept his speeding ticket. ($150??? You could've SWORN it was less last time.) And your growing sense of roiling nausea only becomes worse when, back on the road again, you run smack into a beaver (it was a squirrel last time, really, wasn't it?) But it's the sight of BillyBob emerging from the roadside undergrowth with a hunting rifle and a fondue fork that makes you realize... fate can never be escaped. And so you shut your heart and mind until you arrive safely back at the town square. Just don't think about the rest. And whatever you do, DON'T UNDO AGAIN. >UNDO It's worse this time. So very much worse. The strip search, the jail sentence, the dead deer... You should've known. You should've been more fucking CAREFUL. Deja Vu Undo (the phone booth) Oy! Lady! With the opening and the hinges and the whoa-hoy! Please to the thing where the...nice lady! Open of the--to--oy! Oy! With the death message and the restore and the nice savey! Wake Yay it was all a dream everything is ok phew that was lucky. You have won Win Okay. You win Section heading Write the second section of your page here. Category:Games